4 Good Habits To Save Yourself (And Others) From Inbox Hell
Last week I published a guest post by John Anyasor on how to take revenge on your email inbox. He made a good point about sharing your email address. It’s very easy to just put your address out there, use it to register on a bunch of sites without a second thought, mention it in conversation on forums, etc. However, this all leads to your inbox filling up with junk that you have no interest in (I’m not just talking about spam here either) and is just one example of bad email habits.
So much is written about how to manage your inbox – make quick decisions when processing, archive and tag them, write brief replies – but that doesn’t resolve the bigger issue. The number of emails floating round yearly is astronomical but over 80% of them are simply unwanted or just outright spam. I believe to really get a grip of your inbox you need to deal with the cause not the symptoms, and break those bad emailing habits we all seem to pick up. And by adjusting how many emails you receive and send out, you will in turn benefit other people.
- Turn off notifications
Social media sites can be borderline abusive when it comes to dishing out email notifications for every little thing. Emails to let you know who has commented on a thread, who is following you, who left a comment on one your pictures, who requested to be friends with one of your friends’ friends… friends. But if you’re a regular user of, say, Twitter or Facebook (and according to all mainstream media outlets, everybody in the entire world is) you’ll get this information on the site anyway. Edit those notification settings! - Reply!
If somebody sends you an email which expects a reply – whether it be your best friend or some upstart company wanting to give their new productivity app some publicity – give them a reply (unless of course it’s clearly spam) even if the email has no interest to you whatsoever. This may be a controversial idea and you may argue that if you ignore emails they will go away. But in my experience they’ll often send catch-up emails several weeks or days later. Save your time and theirs. A simple “Thanks – but no thanks” is usually more than enough. - Protect your email address
So many sites require your email address and almost all of them will take advantage of it if you let them. Companies in particular are bad at this, clogging up your inbox with their latest offers and updates. When registering, for instace, you often have the option of signing up to these updates, promotions, newsletters, etc. Make sure you select the options that say “No, no, no! I do not want to recieve your spammy emails. Go away!” (or something like that). - Don’t use email…
There was a time when email was the easiest way of communicating online (it might have been about the same time we stopped living in caves). However, nowadays there are so many different options. A site like Facebook can do a more than adequate job with the socializing side of things (no more emailing massive photo attachments for instance) and because Twitter is limited to 140 characters is makes it deceptively good for to-the-point communicating. Even the good ol’ phone, IM and texting can be better than email in the right circumstances. Leo of Zen Habits recently covered his own experiences of how he has cut out email, which is worth checking out for extra thoughts and ideas on this suggestion
12 Comments
Thanks for the information. I try to opt out of most promotion and updates but sometimes when you sign up for a newsletter you end up with a lot more promotion than news. That’s when I unsubscribe. Sometimes it is hard to accept the fact that I might miss something if I unsubscribe but with an overflowing inbox I don’t have time to read it all anyway.
Thanks for the comment Janice. Over the last couple of months, every time I get an email newsletter I’m not interested in I immediately look for the unsubscribe link. It’s all those emails I signed up for years ago without a second thought that still clog up my inbox!
Hi, what do you think about a separate email account for all those newsletters? They would not clog up your real inbox, and you could tidy it up (if you like) or forget about it completely…
Interesting idea Stefan. My main issue would be that it’s still another account you need to worry about regardless of whether you’d use it or not. It’s still dealing with the symptoms and not the cause.
Great points. My main thing is to process emails the first time I read them. Sometimes emails end up sitting in my inbox for ages and I look at them several times thinking that I’ll get onto it later. Of course it’s way easier just to do them there and then wherever possible rather than letting it drag on.
Julian, if leaving emails till later is a problem to you than the answer is certainly to do them straightaway. Personally, I process them in bulk as and when there enough to warrant my time and energy. It’s about what works for you.
Here are some additional suggestions that have worked for me:
Separate private and business email accounts. Don’t mix your email. You get to inbox zero faster and you check different accounts (contexts) at different frequencies – private once a day, business every two hours.
Use labels or categories not folders. Search is easier and you can file faster. Examples would be “Processed”, “Exceptions”, “Follow Up”, etc.
Refresh every ninety minutes, not the default five. It reduces the conversation affect and blocks recieved mail into manageable chunks.
And the final tip, use the phone if you can, especially for important messages. Email is a crude means of communication and does not convey enough emotion.
Piaras, thanks for your extra suggestions. I particularly like the one about how email is a crude form of communication. I’ve never really thought of it that way but you’re actually right.
I’m using two awesome tools for Apple Mail, that’s MailTags and MailAct-on. They’re both great when it comes to creating rules and moving messages to various folders (both automated and manually by using shortcuts). I’m also using Spam Arrest in order to protect me from spam. It works great, I receive close to zero spam. I think it’s important to find useful tools to help you manage your email.
Thanks for this post, I found some useful and novel info here. I actually most like your last point about using email alternatives. I hope that the medium will evolve or be replaced with something better soon. Twitter is too spammy for me and Facebook too gossipy, so I’m still waiting for the right tool!
One thing I do that I simply don’t have to is leaving Thunderbird running most of the time. I should only start it and download new emails when I know I have some time to organize and answer them all.
Good tips! I closed down my email notifications from social networks… however they still keep popping up from Facebook. I guess some emails you just cant get rid of!
I’ve learned that replying quickly clears my head. When I open an email and its not a priority email, and then I go to the seemingly most important, I rarely get back to the other ones in a timely manner. But when I open then reply, it frees me to spend time on the more important ones.
Thanks for the tips.